Erich Frank’s Introduction to
Caroline’s and Schelling’s Reviews on belles-lettres in the
Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung [*]
At the peak of Schelling’s philosophical fame, probably very few of his contemporaries were aware of his poetic productions, the authorship of which he resisted acknowledging his entire life. News may have reached a broader circle at a relatively early date that the well-known philosopher was behind the pseudonym Bonaventura in Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck’s Musen-Almanach für das Jahr 1802; [1] one does at least find such attribution, as Franz Schultz has ascertained, [2] as early as 1818 in the most common literary reference works of the time.
Yet even as peculiar and significant a creation as the “Epikurisch Glaubensbekenntnis Heinz Widerporstens” did not become known as a whole as Schelling’s work until long after his death. [3] Given Schelling’s skillful obfuscation of the provenance of his poetic attempts, the suspicion inevitably arose that other, as yet unknown demonstrations of his dealings with belles-lettres might exist. Such could hardly be the case up to the year 1803, since up to that point we are probably informed concerning the entire scope of Schelling’s artistic plans and works through his letters to Wilhelm Schlegel, [4] in whom Schelling confided and from whom he solicited advice in all literary matters.
But this source dries up in 1803, [5] after which we must rely solely on extremely sparse allusions in Schelling’s and Caroline’s letters, none of which suffice to disperse the previous obfuscation entirely. Thus could it happen that Schelling was long considered to be the author of that peculiarly mysterious book that appeared at Michaelmas 1804 with the publisher Dienemann in Penig under the title Die Nachtwachen des Bonaventura, which without exaggeration one might well call one of the most ingenious products of Romanticism.
Yet even the recent attempt by Franz Schultz [6] to attribute this piece to the good Friedrich Gottlob Wetzel [1779–1819] cannot convince anyone familiar with the writings of this secondary intellect; on the other hand, the sensuously animated style of the Nachtwachen deviates so strikingly from Schelling’s otherwise familiar prose — which, as ingeniously as its constructions consistently are, nonetheless is never without a certain abstract calm — that one is hesitant to accept the philosopher as its author. [7]
We will, however, reserve the interesting resolution of this literary-historical riddle for another place [8] and be content here with illuminating a considerably more modest literary mystery concerning Schelling and Caroline than the Nachtwachen might be. For one might very well use the word “mystery” in connection with the belletristic reviews that appeared in the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung during the years 1805–9, reviews whose authors, namely, Schelling and Caroline, have remained unknown till today despite the not inconsiderable attention many of them elicited in their own day. [9] Indeed, these reviews so distinguish themselves through their intellect, humor, insight, and wit, that even today, after the reviewed books themselves have fortunately long been forgotten, these reviews still manage to elicit a certain interest among readers.
A passage in one of Schelling’s letters suggests that other unknown reviews by Schelling almost certainly might exist. “The review,” Schelling writes there to Heinrich Karl Abraham Eichstädt on 2 April 1806, the editor of the new Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, “will, I hope, be commensurate with your remarks. I must have expressed myself poorly, since you were expecting an essay on the author in question.” [10]
But we know nothing about this review; and how might one even go about finding it, given that the contributions to the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung are signed not with names, but ciphers, which were, moreover, often changed to protect the mystery of authorship even more securely? Although we do know that as a rule, Schelling indicated his reviews with Π-χ-ν, [11] a survey of the various issues of this journal for the months in question reveals no reviews under this cipher — but does turn up something else: in the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1806) 91 (16 April 1806), 113–20, and 92 (17 April 1806), 121–25, [12] i.e., precisely during the time when one might expect to find the presumed review, a discussion of Fichte’s Über das Wesen des Gelehrten, und seine Erscheinungen im Gebiete der Freyheit (Berlin 1806) signed by Κλ., whose witty polemic and superior irony prompted even Goethe to conclude the presence of a reviewer with a highly cultivated mind. [13] —
Might this be the aforementioned review? We voiced this suspicion in our edition of Fichte’s Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben. [14] And indeed, “this discussion, presented with such a handsome balance between reasonableness and understanding,” might well come from Schelling given its linguistic form as well as its philosophical inclination; and one might adduce no less a witness than Fichte himself, who assumed such was definitely the case and even accused Schelling publicly, in unmistakable language (in the second supplement to the Anweisung zum Seligen Leben in May 1806 [15] ), of being the author.
And yet as was emphasized even at the time, much militated against this presumption. Not only that people whom one had to view as initiates into the editorial secret resolutely mentioned the historian Heinrich Luden as the author, but, perhaps even more significant, that soon thereafter, a second review of Fichte’s book followed this first in the same journal, [16] one that now doubtless Schelling himself had authored and which is also signed with the initials of his name, and one in which, moreover, Schelling mentioned the earlier review with such extraordinary praise that it would hardly be comprehensible were that earlier one written by him as well.
That said, a certain degree of suspicion could not but remain despite these counterarguments as long as the review Schelling sent to the editors in the spring of 1806 had not been definitively determined. This question could not in any case be resolved based on the documentation available to us at the time. [17]
Thanks, however, to a fortunate convergence of circumstances, or rather to Goethe’s prudent foresight as the founder and actual head of the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung — at least during the initial years of its existence — precisely the most important editorial archives with respect to this question have been preserved. For Goethe, wisely anticipating future curiosity, had all the files relating to the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung carefully organized and put in safekeeping, “for perhaps,” he remarks, “our descendants will amuse themselves examining the development of what for us at least is an extremely important event.” [18]
These files are now in the Weimar Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv; other editorial papers are now housed in the Jena University library, namely, the old book fair catalogues on the basis of which the editors assigned the various recently published books for review to different reviewers. Next to every book one can read the number of the reviewer, the date the review was received, and the issue in which the review was published, entered all the more conscientiously insofar as it was apparently according to precisely these entries that payments were reckoned. An index of reviewers resolves the references of these numbers. Goethe, for example, is indicated by 1, Schiller by 4, Schelling by 409. Almost all the significant names of the time appear in this index. Hegel alone is missing. Although he, too, had been solicited by Goethe to participate, [19] Goethe was not entirely satisfied with the sample review he submitted, and Hegel contributed nothing thereafter.
These documents, likely to everyone’s surprise, reveal that the review Schelling mentions in that letter is in fact a discussion of August von Kotzebue’s Kleine Romane, Erzählungen usw. [20] But even that is not the whole story. Further investigation turned up a whole series of similar reviews, all of which appear in the files under the name Schelling. Such does not at all mean, however, that he himself authored all of them.
A more detailed and extensive investigation was able to disclose with certainty that a large number of these, indeed, the majority, is to be attributed to Caroline. The circumstances surrounding these reviews are in fact quite unique.
Eichstädt had turned to Schelling as early as 20 June 1804 with the request that Schelling secure for him a capable colleague for the rubric of belles-lettres, an area that indeed had already become a headache for the editor of the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung! Even in the initial months of the journal’s existence, Eichstädt was already lamenting to Goethe how irksome it was “that excellent reviewers will not agree to review the ordinary products of so-called belletristic, and yet precisely those products do nonetheless have to be reviewed, if for no other reason than to assuage the publishers.” [21]
Wilhelm Schlegel, from whom one had hoped for so much in precisely this area — after all, within a period of no more than 4 1/2 years, he had submitted almost 300 reviews to the original Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung [22] — initially seemed intent on leaving the journal quite in the lurch. And indeed, up till the year 1808 he submitted only eight reviews. [23] Goethe then suggested Schiller as a reviewer for this area of literature. [24] “With the assistance of this distinguished man,” Eichstädt responded, “things would admittedly soon and quite efficiently be put aright in the area of belletristic could he but maintain the requisite desire and drive. That said, however,” he quickly adds, “my own experience evokes a bit of mistrust in his steadfastness in this regard, something I have not concealed even from Schiller himself.” [25]
This mistrust proved to be all too well founded, for as a matter of fact, the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung never received a single submission from Schiller.
It was in this situation of distress that Schelling now came to Eichstädt’s aid. On 20 December 1804, [26] he wrote the editor: “As far as a contributor in the area of belles-lettres is concerned, I can suggest only that you send me a number of books from that area; you will then receive reviews of those books, and if they are to your liking, I will assume responsibility once and for all for securing such and can indeed even guarantee a considerable number of contributions from the same hand.” Eichstädt was delighted to accept, since it was not at all difficult to guess that, “ultimately, the proposed reviewer will in fact likely be a certain lady,” [27] since Eichstädt was doubtless acquainted with Caroline as the author of various reviews that Wilhelm Schlegel had contributed to the original Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. [28]
Hence immediately after receiving the letter, he sent “a small number of so-called belletristic products from the shipping office” in order, as he expressed it to Goethe, to “try things out.” [29] The archives enable us to determine which books were involved: “[Samuel Gottlieb] Bürde,” “[Wilhelm] Calezki,” Nathan der Weise (travesty), the journal Aurora, and the Musenalmanach of Varnhagen and Chamisso. The promised reviews were received on 22 February 1805, with only the assessment of the Musenalmanach lingering until 2 April 1805.
There can be no doubt that Caroline authored all these reviews; two of them, namely, that of Aurora and of the Musenalmanach, are still extant in manuscript form and exhibit the characteristic features of Caroline’s handwriting. This fact alone, however, cannot constitute proof of authorship, for we know that Caroline customarily copied out all of Schelling’s own pieces before they were sent to the publisher. [30] This is why one would have to assume from the very outset, even without knowing for certain, that the reviews written by Schelling, too, were copied by Caroline.
We learn quite by chance from Georg Waitz, for example, [31] that the review of the “Erzählungen von Kotzebue und Eberhard” was still extant in Caroline’s handwriting, merely “with an addendum by Schelling”; — and yet Schelling himself was surely the sole author. Although it is true that point §5.q of the contract that every reviewer and thus also Schelling had to sign, explicitly stipulated that “every review be submitted in the reviewer’s own hand, but without his signature,” Schelling was just as explicitly excused from this stipulation: “Go ahead and either have the reviews written or copied just as you wish,” Eichstädt writes Schelling on 6 March 1807, “I think I recognize the handwriting, and I know that these delightfully inspired strokes come from a hand that performs the latter task precisely because it is equally capable of performing the former.” [32]
Hence for resolving the question whether a review was written by Schelling or Caroline is concerned, it is of no significance whether it was written in Caroline’s handwriting, since it might nonetheless still have been authored by Schelling. This question can instead be answered once and for all only by stylistic considerations; nor is such difficult, since the philosopher’s abstract and yet consistently clearly organized language, with its logically tight conceptual structure, differs so strikingly from Caroline’s light and mischievously graceful sentences that we have even succeeded in definitively determining, in a review authored jointly by Caroline and Schelling, the place where Schelling’s text ceases and Caroline’s commences. [33]
Since, however, the actual demonstration of the accuracy of our attribution of individual reviews to either Caroline or Schelling necessarily involves an examination of considerable details, we have chosen to present such material in our annotations to the individual pieces instead.
By contrast, a few words about the general character of the new Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung may be helpful. Anyone who leafs through this periodical today, of which one issue of a half printer’s sheet appeared daily — with the exception of Sundays and holidays — and which contained nothing but reviews, will hardly comprehend how such a newspaper could possibly succeed; and yet not only did it succeed, it even made its senior editor rich, an editor who, when he died, left his heirs no fewer than five feudal estates. [34]
The honorariums for contributors, moreover, were by no means modest for the time. A reviewer received “17 1/2 Rhein. Taler Conventionsfuss per printer’s sheet for a review, [35] and a correspondent 10 Taler per printer’s sheet for the correspondences that appeared in the Intelligenzblatt, making it easy enough to understand how literati at the time could live from their reviews in the true sense of the word. To properly comprehend the significance of this newspaper during its time, we must keep in mind that for that generation, literature had become approximately was politics is for us today, and that literary events and feuds were able to elicit quite widespread and indeed the most animated interest on the part of the public.
The original Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung had attained quite specific significance since 1785 by becoming, under its editors Christian Gottfried Schütz and Gottlieb Hufeland, the forum of the Kantian school. Although such did indeed constitute the foundation of its considerable stature, it also brought about its later demise. For by clinging tenaciously to rigid Kantianism even during a time when Fichte and Schelling had already long taken philosophy beyond this narrow perspective, the newspaper was unable to avoid the ultimate break that eventually came about precisely with the most energetic and promising talents.
Rudolf Haym has exhaustively recounted the dispute between Wilhelm Schlegel and Schelling with the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. [36] The consequence of this break with the leaders was that the entire Romantic school turned away from the newspaper, and now things quickly deteriorated for it. The editor Schütz thought he could check the threatening demise by transferring the paper to Halle, a move that would have constituted a serious setback for the university in Jena, one from which it might not have recovered, since it had already been sufficiently damaged by the exit of so many important men during the past few years, such as Fichte, Schelling, Gottlieb Hufeland, and others.
Hence when Goethe caught wind of the editor’s plans to move the newspaper to Halle (late August 1803), he immediately set things into motion to counter the insidious plan. His energetic shrewdness and probably above all the sheer weight of his name did indeed succeed, contrary to all expectation, in establishing a new literary newspaper in Jena in little more than three months; and when on 1 January 1804 the earlier Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung began to appear in Halle, the first issue of the new Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung could also be distributed in Jena. Goethe vividly recounts the entire course of events in his Tages- und Jahreshefte.
The first thing Goethe did, however, was to establish a connection precisely with the two heads of the Romantic school whose apostasy had been the real reason for the demise of the earlier newspaper, namely, with Wilhelm Schlegel and Schelling. Whereas that earlier newspaper had taken up the cause of Kantian philosophy, the new one, to distinguish itself clearly from the older, was to take up that of Schelling’s philosophy. [37] The new newspaper had thus originally planned to open with a review of Schelling’s philosophy of nature by the same Henrik Steffens [38] whose review of Schelling’s philosophy of nature the earlier Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung had in fact rejected, thereby also providing the occasion for Schelling’s break with it. [39]
The utterly different character of the new Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung over against that of the old could not have been demonstrated more unequivocally. That the newspaper ultimately did not actually become a forum solely of the new Romantic movement to the extent Goethe had apparently originally envisaged is probably to be ascribed to the editor, Eichstädt, whose more commercially inclined perspective considered it more advisable that the literary newspaper not align itself with a specific school or direction.
In this spirit, Eichstädt was also early able to convince Goethe to allow, alongside Schelling himself, also reviews by Schelling’s adversary Karl Leonhard Reinhold to be published under the philosophical rubric, [40] “because the other party has quite deliberately spread the rumor in Leipzig that our newspaper will be preaching solely Schellingian philosophy.” [41]
These considerations notwithstanding, one cannot entirely deny the Romantic character of a newspaper whose most significant contributors (alongside Goethe, Johannes von Müller, Johann Heinrich Voss, and Reinhold) included Schelling, Caroline, Wilhelm Schlegel, Schleiermacher, Steffens, Georg Friedrich Creuzer, Friedrich Karl von Savigny, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand Solger, Franz von Baader, and Lorenz Oken — at least during the initial years of its existence. [42]
Notes
[*] Rezensionen über schöne Literatur von Schelling und Caroline in der Neuen Jenaischen Literatur-Zeitung, Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch- historische Klasse, Jahrgang 1912, 1. Abhandlung (Heidelberg 1912), 1–12. Notes are those of the translator/editor based on Erich Frank’s original notes, enhanced to provide more complete bibliographical information and references to pertinent material in the present edition. Erich Frank’s explanatory materials are noted as such. Back.
[1] Schelling’s contributions were “Die letzten Worte des Pfarrers zu Drottning auf Seeland,” 118–27 (translation: “The Last Words of the Pastor of Drottning”); “Thier und Pflanze,” 158–59 (translation: see Caroline’s letter to Wilhelm Schlegel on 15 May 1801 [letter 316], note 15); and “Lied,” 241–42 (translation: see Caroline’s letter to Schelling on 13 February 1801 [letter 286], note 13). Back.
[2] Franz Schultz, Der Verfasser der Nachtwachen von Bonaventura. Untersuchungen zur deutschen Romantik (Berlin 1909), 185. Back.
[3] Translation: “Heinz Widerporst’s Epicurean Confession of Faith.” Back.
[4] Erich Frank points out that at the time (1912), practically all of Schelling’s letters to Wilhelm Schlegel were preserved in the latter’s literary estate in the Royal Public Library in Dresden (volume 20). Back.
[5] I.e., after Caroline’s divorce from Wilhelm Schlegel and marriage to Schelling. Back.
[6] Der Verfasser der Nachtwachen von Bonaventura, 199–328. Back.
[7] The author is today generally acknowleged to be Ernst August Klingemann. See Schelling’s letter to Wilhelm Schlegel on 20 April 1801 (letter 309a), note 7. Back.
[8] Erich Frank, “Clemens Brentano. Der Verfasser der Nachtwachen von Bonaventura,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 4 (1912), 417–40. Back.
[9] Erich Frank’s footnote: Unknown, that is, with one exception. In his own edition of Caroline’s letters (in his introduction in volume 1, page v, and volume 2, page 378), Georg Waitz already correctly attributed to Caroline the review in the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1805) 107 (6 May 1805), 241–45, on Karl August Varnhagen von Ense and Adelbert von Chamisso’s Musenalmanach auf das Jahr 1805, thereby also refuting Varnhagen’s presumption (Adelbert von Chamissos Werke, vol. 5,1, Leben und Briefe, ed. Julius Eduard Hitzig [Leipzig 1839], 70fn), that “the author was Herr von Jariges.”
That notwithstanding, this same incorrect attribution is still found in Goedeke 6, §291, 1, 3 (similarly as well in the reprint of the Musenalmanach of 1806 by Ludwig Geiger, Musenalmanach auf das Jahr 1806, ed. L. A. von Chamisso and K. A. Varnhagen, reprint ed. Ludwig Geiger, Berliner Neudrucke, 2. Serie, Band I [Berlin 1889], xii). Concerning an assessment of the Erzählungen of August von Kotzebue and A. E. Eberhard, one reads ibid. merely as an aside that it is still extant in manuscript form. Back.
[11] Plitt 2:104 (see the review “Die Weihnachtsfeier. Ein Gespräch. Von Friedrich Schleiermacher. Halle, 1806,” in Schelling’s Sämmtliche Werke 7:498ff. = Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung [1807] 58 [9 March 1807], 457–64; 59 [10 March 1807], 465–67); the other cipher cited by Plitt, namely, P-p-s., belongs not to Schelling, but to Schleiermacher. Johannes von Müller signed with Ths. (Thucydides), Goethe and the other Weimar contributors with W.K.F. (Weimarer Kunstfreunde), Karl Leonhard Reinhold with Dr., the historian Heinrich Ludenwith Δϑ., etc. The cipher K/L belongs not to Luden, as Woldemar von Biedermann and the Weimarer Ausgabe IV, vol. 22, p. 468 maintain, but to a certain Koethe in Lübben. Caroline’s cipher, Bss., is probably to be read as Böhmer-Schlegel-Schelling. Back.
[12] Frank incorrectly reads the issue numbers as 96 and 97 rather than 91 and 92. Back.
[13] Weimarer Ausgabe IV, no. 5191. Back.
[14] Die Anweisung zum seligen Leben. Nach der ersten Ausgabe mit Nachwort neu herausgegeben von Erich Frank (Jena 1910). Back.
[15] This second supplement was not included in Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s sämmtliche Werke, 8 vols., ed. Immanuel Hermann Fichte (Berlin 1845–46). It was not reprinted until the new edition of Fichte’s works, Joh. Gottl. Fichte, Werke. Auswahl in sechs Bänden, ed. Fritz Medicus (Leipzig 1908–12), vol. 5 (1911), 286ff., and in Erich Frank’s edition of the Anweisung zum seligen Leben (Jena 1910), 222ff. Back.
[16] Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1806) 150 (26 June 1806), 585–92; 151 (27 June 1806), 593–98. Back.
[17] Erich Frank’s footnote: Hence the author [i.e., Frank himself] had to leave this question open (Anweisung zum seligen Leben, 249f.). The assertion there that “members of the Weimar circle whom one could not but view as initiates in the matter mentioned the Jena historian Heinrich Luden as the author” was based less on the passage from a letter from Schleiermacher to Karl Gustav von Brinckmann (Aus Schleiermacher’s Leben 4:129), which speaks only of rumors, than on an as yet unpublished missive from Geheimrat Voigt to Eichstädt on 26 April 1806, from which Woldemar von Biedermann, in his edition of Goethe’s letters to Eichstädt (Goethe’s Briefe an Eichstädt, mit Erläuterungen [Berlin 1872], 290), published the following excerpt: “I received a visit today from Herr Geheimrat von Goethe. When he praised the review of Fichte so highly, I spoke about its author and produced issue 58 of the Göttingen Anzeigen, which I just happened to have” [which contains a review of Luden’s Hugo Grotius], “also mentioning the intentions we had concerning him. He was quite satisfied in that regard.”
Thereafter, in May 1806, Luden was appointed professor extraordinarius in Jena (Acta Academica der Universität Jena, Loc. II, Fach 58, Nr. 638). The archives of the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung do indeed show that it was Ludens who at least submitted the review. Back.
[18] Tag- und Jahreshefte,” 1803, Weimarer Ausgabe 35:154. Back.
[19] Letter of 15 December 1803, Weimarer Ausgabe XVI, 4779. Back.
[20] Erich Frank’s footnote: To these documents, of which I was made aware by a personal communication from Albert Leitzmann in Jena, one might also add Eichstädt’s unpublished letters to Schelling preserved in Schelling’s literary estate, access to which I gratefully received. An assessment of all these files on site was made possible for me by the support of the Heidelberg Academy of Science and Humanities, for which also I would like to express my gratitude here. Above all, however, the author is greatly indebted to Geheimrat Wilhelm Windelband for his varied support of this work. Back.
[21] Letter from Eichstädt to Goethe on 15 April 1804, from the Goethe Archive’s Acta, die allgemeine Jenaische Literatur-Zeitung betr.” (1804) vol. III, 80. Back.
[22] See Rudolf Haym, Die romantische Schule 165. Also Oscar Walzel, ed., Goethe und die Romantik, 1:142–72 (correspondence between Goethe and Wilhelm Schlegel). See Wilhelm’s farewell in the Intelligenzblatt of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1799) 145 (Wednesday, 13 November 1799) (letter/document 255a), note 1. Back.
[23] Reprinted by Eduard Böcking in Wilhelm Schlegel’s Sämmtliche Werke 12:157ff. Back.
[24] Weimarer Ausgabe IV, no. 4958. Back.
[25] Letter of 22 July 1804 in the Akten, vol. III, 129. Back.
[26] Plitt 2:43 (letter 388f in present edition). Back.
[27] Letter to Goethe on 30 December 1804 in the Acta. Back.
[28] In his Kritische Schriften 1:xvii–xviii, Wilhelm Schlegel identified Caroline’s reviews with an asterisk as those of a woman “who possessed all the talents to shine as an author but whose ambition was not pointed in that direction.” See the introductory remarks to the section in the present edition on Caroline’s literary reviews, volume 1. Back.
[29] Letter from Eichstädt to Goethe on 30 December 1804, Acta vol. III, 168. Back.
[30] Cf., e.g., Georg Waitz, (1871), vol. 2, letter 326 (letter 398 in present edition) et passim. Back.
[31] Waitz, (1871), 1:v. Back.
[32] Unpublished in Schelling’s literary estate. Back.
[33] In the review of the eleven novels in the Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1806) 35 (11 February 1806), 273–80. Back.
[34] See Woldemar von Biedermann, Goethes Briefe an Eichstädt, introduction, xxii. Back.
[35] Acta, die Stiftung einer Neuen Allgemeinen Literatur-Zeitung zu Jena betr., 1803, vol. I, 57; see Heinrich Wuttke, Die deutschen Zeitschriften und die Entstehung der öffentlichen Meinung. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Zeitungswesens (Hamburg 1866), 27–28:
The [original] Jena Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung paid 3 Friedrichsd’or per printer’s sheet, which given the value of money in the previous [i.e., 18th] century constituted a handsome payment; the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung in Halle was paying the same rate in the 1840s.
Eichstädt enumerated the overall costs for the first year of the new Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung in a missive to Goethe (Acta, vol. I, 56) at 10,000–12,000 Taler, of which 2738.12 Taler was paid out as honorariums for reviewers (printing costs: 1229.20, bookbinder: 290; postage: 400; Intelligenzblatt: 592.12; proofing: 195.20). Back.
[36] Die romantische Schule 729–37. In this present edition, see the correspondence between Schelling and Wilhelm Schlegel, on the one hand, and the editors of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, Christian Gottfried Schütz and Gottlieb Hufeland, on the other, during the summer and autumn of 1799, culminating in the public farewell declarations of both Schelling and Wilhelm on 2 and 13 November 1799 (letters/documents 252d, 255a). Back.
[37] See also the correspondence between Goethe and Schelling, Schlegel, and Steffens in Goethe und die Romantik. Back.
[38] Because of Steffens’s tardiness, this review did not appear until the issues of 1 May and 10 June 1805: “Schellingsche Natur-Philosophie,” Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1805) 103 (1 May 1805), 209–16; 137 (10 June 1805), 481–88. See Henrik Steffens, Was ich erlebte, 5:11–14, where Steffens explains his surprise at being solicited by Goethe to review Schelling’s philosophy of nature and the circumstances that prevented him from doing so in both a timely and appropriate fashion. Back.
[39] See Schelling, “Anhang zu dem voranstehenden Aufsatz [by Steffens, ‘Recension der neuern naturphilosophischen Schriften des Herausgebers (viz., Schelling)’], betreffend zwei naturphilosophische Recensionen und die Jenaische Allgemeine Literaturzeitung,” Sämmtliche Werke I, 3, 635–58 = Zeitschrift für spekulative Physik (1800) Band I, 49–99; it was in this latter piece that Steffens’ first review was finally published. See Kuno Fischer, Schellings Leben, Werke und Lehre, 3rd ed. (Heidelberg 1902), 85–90. See Schelling’s letter to Wilhelm Schlegel on 6 July 1800 (letter 265), note 5. Back.
[40] Reinhold reviewed Adam Heinrich Müller, Lehre vom Gegensatz (Berlin 1804), Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1805) 106 (4 May 1805), 235–40; Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Sonnenklarer Bericht an das größere Publicum über das eigentliche Wesen der neuesten Philosophie: ein Versuch die Leser zum Verstehen zu zwingen (Berlin 1801), Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1804) 279 (21 November 1804), 353–60; 280 (22 November 1804), 361–62; Friedrich Köppen, Schellings Lehre: Das Ganze der Philosophie des absoluten Nichts; Nebst drey Briefen verwandten Inhalts von Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (Hamburg 1803), Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1804) 94 (19 April 1804), 121–28 (see Schelling’s letter to Hegel on 11 July 1803 [letter 380a], note 14); Jakob Friedrich Fries, Fichtes und Schellings neueste Lehren von Gott und der Welt (Heidelberg 1807), Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung (1812) 7 (9 January 1812), 49–56; as well as other works. Back.
[41] Unpublished in the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv, Acta vol. 2. Back.
[42] Johannes Bobeth, in his interesting book Die Zeitschriften der Romantik (Leipzig 1911), did not deal more extensively with the new (successor) Jenaische Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, apparently because he wanted to limit himself to the material of the publications of the Bibliographische Gesellschaft on this subject. Back.
Translation © 2017 Doug Stott